Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

‘ Und die guten Italiener hätten ausserdem gleich irgend ein Equivalent verlangt — and the good Italians will no doubt have an equivalent claim of their own!’ said Slawata ironically.

‘But the alliance consists of three members and all information ought to be shared. If it’s not, then the Italians are no longer in honour bound.’ suggested Balint.

‘So much the better! So much the better!’ cried his companion. ‘In spite of Aehrenthal I agree with Conrad. The best thing would be an Austrian attack upon Italy. But, of course, Aehrenthal will do anything to hold the alliance together.’

And then he returned to one of his favourite subjects. If events followed the lines he suggested then the world would soon see which was the stronger: ‘… Franz-Josef — Der alter Herr, oder wir, JungÖsterreich — the Old Gentleman, or we, Young Austria!’

And so it came about that the international crisis provoked by the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina heralded a new era in European politics. Aehrenthal, quite unwittingly, created a diplomatic precedent by presenting all Europe with a fait accompli that was contrary to the Treaty of Berlin and bypassed all international discussion.

On the very same day as the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria declared itself an autonomous kingdom instead of only a semi-independent principality nominally subject to the Sultan in Istanbul; this, of course, was done with the full knowledge and approval of the Ballplatz. Both these events were to prove the models for Italy’s occupation of Libya in 1911, without either legal or diplomatic reason and without declaring war on Turkey, and also for the 1912 Balkan war. Together, Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the unilateral declaration of Bulgarian independence, though only formal provocations and not actual acts of war, served as precedents for more violent and more cynical acts of oppression and effectively killed off that moral force which until then had been accorded to the given word. And at the end of the line came that most dramatic and least morally justified — of such acts: Germany’s 1914 invasion of Belgium. And that started the First World War.

Of course the annexation itself had been inevitable and long foreseen. It is unlikely that any other course could then have been taken by the unwieldy Austro-Hungarian monarchy, to whom Fate had then dealt a hand that was almost unplayable. As in Greek tragedies there had arisen a situation in which every option open to Vienna conflicted with another of the Monarchy’s prime interests. That the empire remained a cohesive whole depended upon a complicated web of alliances, treaties, unwritten agreements and historical relationships, and the recognition of the loyalties and rights that these conferred. To dishonour any one of these ancient obligations was to undermine and deny the validity of the whole structure.

It was therefore as a breach of the given word that the international Press interpreted the latest events, and on which was based the storm of criticism and disapproval that was directed against Vienna. The campaign started with the publication in the London newspapers of photographs of the Emperor and his heir, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, labelled succinctly ‘Breakers of their Word’. Such an unspoken and insulting personal attack seemed extraordinary coming from England where one was accustomed to more measured tones.

The first obvious effect of this action by the Monarchy was that from that day Great Britain became one of Austria-Hungary’s most implacable enemies.

In Istanbul the reaction was limited to a boycott of Austrian goods, for there everyone’s eyes were on Bulgaria since her troops had been massed on the Rumelian frontier; and it was against this new threat from the north that Turkey responded by mobilizing her reserves.

The wildest turmoil raged in Belgrade. Volunteer forces were enrolled, there were street demonstrations almost every day and the mob attacked Austro-Hungarian shops and looted them. Montenegro prepared itself for war by dragging cannon onto the heights of Mount Lovcsen, and Vienna responded by sending warships down the Danube to Zimony, calling up the reserves of the south-west provinces and banning the shipment of arms to the neighbouring states of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While all this was going on in the Balkans the diplomatic representatives of those great powers opposed to Austria swung into action. Izvolsky rushed to Paris to repair the effects of his first mistake in listening without comment to those conversations which had implied general acceptance of the forthcoming annexation. Now he proposed another conference which would have the declared intention of handing over to its neghbours the Sanjak of Novibazar, a Turkish province set between Montenegro and Serbia, thereby giving the latter a corridor to the Adriatic. After Paris he went to London and there, in the middle of the month, settled the arrangements for the preliminary discussions. At the end of October Prince George, heir to the throne of Serbia, was received by the Tsar on a state visit.

It now seemed to the initiated, as indeed it did several times in the next few months, that war was inevitable.

The Hungarians, of course, seemed totally to ignore the implications of what was happening outside their own frontiers. There was some passing comment in the Press, but no one took it as having any relevance to their own affairs, for, perhaps wisely, the newspapers had adopted a conscious policy of not being alarmist. And at that time there were few who had any feeling for the significance of events abroad. Most people read the foreign news as they would any amusing but transient tale, as two-dimensional and as trivial as a comedy on a movie screen. Neither Franz-Josef’s Speech from the Throne, nor Aehrenthal’s explanations — nor even the daily telegrams from London, Belgrade and St Petersburg — held the smallest interest for anyone in Budapest. With a yawn most readers turned to the next page where more was to be found about the death of the popular parliamentarian and journalist, Aladar Zboray, than there was about the Bosnian affair. Not that Zboray did not deserve the attention he got, for he was a most affable and loveable man and an opposition speaker whom everyone liked.

It was, of course, possible that the Press purposely honoured their departed colleague at such length as such paragraphs always seemed, at the very least, reassuring.

There were, nevertheless, other matters which merited attention.

On the day of the Speech from the Throne there was another armed demonstration which marched right into the centre of the city as far as Octagon Square. Much was made of this, as it was about the future role of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was no lack of legal experts who harked right back to the time of the Angevin kings, stating that even then Bosnia had been Hungary’s vassal, just like Croatia and the long-disputed Dalmatia, without fully grasping that by doing so they were advocating that very Trialism they so hotly condemned elsewhere. In domestic matters the newspapers wrote excitedly about the proposed fusion of the great parties and a rumour spread, emanating apparently from Hollo’s supporters, that the real reason for all these public demonstrations was simply that they had been the result of collusion between Andrassy and the Socialists, and that he had gone to these lengths so as to create a climate in which his proposals for a Plural Vote were sure to get accepted!

It was, perhaps, hardly surprising that such petty parochial matters, rather than remote international events, should be the first to awaken general interest. After such a long period of peace there were few people who believed in the possibility of war, and it was, after all, only natural that people should take an interest in what seemed to affect their own lives. People had lived for so long in an atmosphere of party strife, and the need to remain within the bounds of legality, that their first attention was automatically directed at such matters. If is, after all, a generally accepted rule that only some cataclysmic event or terrible danger can wipe away the preoccupation with the joys, sorrows and troubles of everyday life. The news was mulled over when they read the morning newspapers, argued and discussed in the clubs and coffee-houses and possibly even discussed at the family meals but, while it was, everyday life went on as usual and most people only thought seriously about their work, their business interests, property, family and friends, their social activities, about love and sport and maybe a little about local politics and the myriad trifles that are and always have been everyone’s daily preoccupation. And how could it have been otherwise?